Syria transition plan

Syria's vice president, Farouq al-Shara'a, would lead a new senate in Syria as part of a draft political transition plan drawn up by the UN and the internal opposition in Syria, according to the Arabic newspaper Asharq Alawsat.

The plan foresees the creation of a 140-member senate body tasked with leading the dialogue process between the regime and the opposition during a transitional phase, said Asharq al-Awsat.

"This senate will be the core of (Syria's) Second Republic," said the London-based newspaper.

While 102 senate members would be elected "under the UN's strict supervision, the remaining 38 would be appointed by the regime, the opposition and religious institutions.

Updated at 3.57pm GMT

3.40pm GMT

British Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt has tweeted his regret at the death of young protester Hussain Aljazeri and stressed the need for all sides to commit to Bahrain's National Consensus Dialogue:

Alistair Burt (@AlistairBurtFCO)

Saddened by death of Hussain Al Jaseeri in #Bahrain. Important protests remain peaceful and Bahraini authorities exercise restraint. 1 of 2

The Bahrain Live Blog has posted this picture which it says is of the death certificate of Hussain Aljazeri, the 16-year-old protester killed in clashes this morning between security forces and demonstrators.

3.18pm GMT

Opposition activists have posted dozens of videos online of today's clashes between security forces and protesters.

Most appear to involve groups of youths throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at riot police, and police responding with tear gas and what looks like rubber bullets, and occasionally with birdshot.

This compilation video gives a good flavour.

3.04pm GMT

Syrian rebels down two jets

Video has emerged of two jets being shot down in the northern province of Idlib.

Both jets were hit by heavy machineguns while the air force was carrying out a series of raids in the area, according to the the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Bahrain

Here is the link to the full statement – and its official translation – by Bahrain's chief of public security following this morning's protests and the death of a 16-year-old protester (see earlier post).

Taking Shaddadeh (marked in red on this map) in Hasakah province brings the rebels closer to the provincial capital Hasakah (marked in blue).

Video [warning: disturbing content] posted on YouTube showing fighters from the al Qaida-linked Nusra Front celebrating the taking of the town by trampling on a poster of Bashar al-Assad.

Reuters adds:

Omar Abu Laila, a spokesman for the eastern command of the rebel Free Syrian Army, said rebel units including Nusra fighters now controlled al-Shaddadeh after overrunning state security and military intelligence compounds.

Hasakah, an ethnically mixed province of Arabs and Kurds, accounts for most of Syria's oil output, which is estimated to have fallen by a third, to no more than 100,000 barrels per day, since an uprising against Assad's rule erupted in March 2011.

Abu Laila said an army garrison guarding a nearby gas field, al-Ghabsa, had fled as armed opposition units advanced from the Euphrates River toward Shaddadeh.

"Shaddadeh and Ghabsa are now under our out control. In the next few days we will advance toward Hasakah City," Abu Laila said, speaking by phone from eastern Syria.

He said Nusra detonated car bombs near the security compounds in Shaddadeh, enabling the attacking force to storm the buildings and take the city, a pattern seen in other areas taken over by the mostly Islamist armed opposition.

The rebel advance in Hasakah province has raised concern among the political leadership of the opposition, which has little control over the rebels, about deepening ethnic tensions between Arabs and Kurds, who already have decades long land disputes in the province.

Assad has tried to placate Syria's one million Kurds since the uprising, promising to give citizenship to thousands of disenfranchised Kurds in Hasakah.

A tacit alliance has also emerged between Assad and the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which now a strong military presence in Hasakah and other Kurdish regions, to the discomfort of Turkey.

Massoud Akko, a Kurdish opposition campaigner in Norway in contact with Hasakah, confirmed that Shaddadeh has been overrun but said that taking Hasakah city would cause a bloodbath unless an agreement was reached with PKK fighters in the city.

"Taking a main city like Hasakah is important for the opposition but the PKK is entrenched there and an agreement with them has to be reached," Akko said.

Updated at 4.22pm GMT

2.30pm GMT

The Bahrain Centre for Human Rights blog has collected a series of Twitter pics showing what it calls excessive use of teargas by security forces against demonstrators, and of police using rubber pullets and birdshot. Here is a selection:

In its only story on the clashes so far, the official Bahrain News Agency has said "masked outlaws" broke into and shut down a number of primary schools, "threatening their administrative staff, obliging them to leave their schools and then closing the gates with locks and chains in order to prevent teachers and students from entering them".

it quoted an education ministry statement as saying a girls' secondary school "came under attack by thugs who threw a Molotov cocktail on the schools while students were there" while at another school, "four masked saboteurs beat a school guard severely, tore his uniform and grabbed his cellphone while on duty".

The agency said the incidents were "in line with systematic attacks on educational establishments in order to prevent them from carrying out their educational mission and providing educational services for students".

Updated at 3.14pm GMT

1.22pm GMT

'Protests show irrevelevance of government dialogue'

Today’s protests in Bahrain illustrate the irrelevance of the government’s dialogue initiative, and the violent way the demonstrations have been policed will further widen the country’s political rift, says Bahraini activist Ala’a Shehabi.

The majority of Bahrainis really just want to live in basic dignity and freedom. They don’t believe the current royal family is willing to deliver that. And with the current death toll, passions are running high and there is zero trust at the moment with the current royal family.

State media continues to accuse protesters of being traitors and being backed by Iran, and that just doesn’t help. The rift is so large at the moment, it is difficult to envision that reconciliation is possible unless very serious democratic reforms take place.

Shehabi, who is the founder of the campaign group Bahrain Watch, said the opposition is not taking the government’s dialogue initiative seriously because it doesn’t involve negotiations with senior members of the government or the royal family. The oppositon al-Wefaq group has only sent a low level member to the talks, she pointed out.

We have a different dialogue taking place on the streets of Bahrain ... To the youth on the street the dialogue initiative is irrelevant. Even the opposition members who have taken part in the dialogue stress the importance of the street protest movement.

There is so much scepticism about the sincerity by the government over these talks that no one is really taking them seriously.

She said there were suspicions that the launch of the dialogue initiative was a PR exercise to deflect attention from the second anniversary protests and Bahrain’s political crisis. “The very fact that you are asking about dialogue suggests that to some extent they have succeeded,” Shehabi said.

She insisted that the majority of protests were peaceful.

The videos I am seeing today are of peaceful protesters bravely facing the police. This is not to romanticise the protests. There has been an escalation of violent tactics like stone-throwing and molotov cocktails, but these are nothing in the face of the tanks, guns and ammunition that the security forces are using - that are leading to the continuing deaths of protesters.

She urged the US and the UK to stop providing “military, logistical and moral support” to the Bahraini government.

Updated at 3.12pm GMT

1.14pm GMT

Another tweeted picture from the main opposition al-Wefaq group showing demonstrators taking to the streets in Diraz, a village on the north-west coast, following the death this morning of a 16-year-old boy in anti-government protests.

It basically says that following "inflammatory invitations to marches, sit-ins and civil disobedience", groups of protesters have "since yesterday evening committed acts of sabotage, blocked streets, closed major roads and committed acts of violence, and continue to do this morning".

It says "the necessary precautionary measures to counter these attempts to break the law have been taken" but that "a number of security men have been injured, some seriously" in clashes with demonstrators.

The worst incident so far was at around 8am this morning, the MoI said, and involved a group of some 300 demonstrators "attacking security forces using iron bars and Molotov cocktails".

A number of people have been arrested and referred to the public prosecutor, it added, appealing to citizens "not to respond to calls ... threatening the security of the nation" and calling on "everyone to reject and condemn all forms of violence and riots".

Updated at 3.11pm GMT

12.29pm GMT

Another opposition activist's video, shot from a window as a furious man confronts security forces after the death of a teenager in this morning's clashes:

Opposition activists Mohamed Ashoor comments

الوطن ليلى وكلنا قيس (@MohmdAshoor)

He was saying how dare you kill this child, shoot me too, shoot me I don't care.

Reuters has a fresh update following the death of a 16-year-old boy in clashes between security forces and protesters marking the second anniversary of the Gulf state's failed pro-democracy uprising:

The government's information department said a 16-year-old boy had been brought to the Salmaniya Medical Complex in the capital Manama at 7 a.m. (0400 GMT) and had been pronounced dead on arrival.

"The cause of death is as yet unknown. The case has been referred to the public prosecution and a thorough investigation is being conducted," it said in a statement, urging people to remain calm and "not to spread unfounded rumours".

Witnesses said at least three policemen had been injured in clashes that began early in the morning. Many roads connecting villages around Manama were closed, while schools for Westerners remained shut for fear of violence.

The Interior Ministry said rioters had blocked a number of roads, and security forces were seeking to restore order.

11.11am GMT

An opposition news outlet, the Media Centre of the Revolution in Bahrain, has posted video – which we cannot verify – purporting to show clashes between demonstrators and police on the island of Sitra following the death of a 16-year-old protester reported earlier this morning:

Updated at 11.24am GMT

11.10am GMT

Kerry on Syria

The new US secretary of state, John Kerry, has praised the courage of Syrian opposition leader Moaz al-Khatib in offering conditional dialogue with the Assad regime.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday Kerry also said he had new ideas on how to persuade President Assad to stand down, but he didn’t elaborate.

The reasons for wanting to have a negotiated solution, which the Syrian opposition council leader Khatib has himself courageously spoken out about in the last days is that you want to avoid, if you can – if you can, I emphasize – the implosion of the state, because that’s dangerous for everybody. And it proposes the possibility of the worst kinds of outcomes.

So we need to keep this possibility of a negotiated solution in mind. I still remain hopeful that there may be an equation where the Russians and the United States could, in fact, find more common ground than we have yet with respect to that. And I know that His Majesty will be visiting Russia and there’ll be efforts here to try to follow up on those possibilities.

I believe there are additional things that can be done to change his current perception. I’m not going to go into them here today now, but those are things that – I’m new on the job here, but I’ve got a good sense of what I think we might propose. And we need to really consult with an awful lot of players here before we start again making any kind of public announcements.

But I can assure you my goal is to see us change his calculation. My goal is to see us have a negotiated outcome and minimize the violence. It may not be possible. I’m not going to stand here and tell you that’s automatic or easily achievable. There are a lot of forces that have been unleashed here over the course of the last months. But we owe it to ourselves, we owe it to the Syrian people and the region and the world, to make every effort to explore ways to achieve that negotiated outcome. And we intend to do that.

Updated at 11.17am GMT

10.55am GMT

Bahrain

Another activist, Mohamed Ashoor, explains the protesters' principal grievances in three succinct tweets:

الوطن ليلى وكلنا قيس (@MohmdAshoor)

The fundamentals of this revolution is that we want political & social justice in #Bahrain. Hamad promised it a decade ago & yet to deliver!

Two more pictures purporting to show the clashes in Bahrain this morning between security forces and protesters marking the second anniversary of Bahrain's quashed pro-democracy uprising. (The first picture, which does not show up in the tweet but which you can see here, appears to show security forces using an armoured vehicle to disperse protesters).

Bahrain

Another opposition activist has tweeted pictures from the anti-regime 14 February Media Network purporting to be of Ali Ahmed Ibrahim al-Jazeeri, the teenager reportedly killed in clashes with Bahraini security forces early this morning.

His claims failed to convince Aaron Stein, non-proliferation programme manager at the Turkish thinktank the Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy, and weapons blogger Eliot Higgins, who tweets under the name @Brown_Moses.

It's impossible to verify this picture but a well-known Bahraini activist known on Twitter as Lulu Avenue has posted this photograph appearing to suggest it shows how the teenage protester reported killed by security forces this morning may have died.

Protests appear to be taking place around Bahrain. AFP photographer Mohammed al-Shaikh has filed a number of dramatic shots of clashes this morning between demonstrators and security forces in the village of Sanabis, west of the capital Manama.

Protesters clash with security forces in Sanabis during a protest to mark the second anniversary of the uprising in Bahrain. Photograph: Mohammed al-Shaikh/AFP/Getty Images

Updated at 10.03am GMT

9.39am GMT

Here are two more tweeted pictures of what the main opposition al-Wefaq group says are raids this morning by the Bahraini security forces in Sitra, where numerous arrests have reportedly been made:

Reuters has more details on the death reported earlier today as activists in Bahrain demonstrate on the second anniversary of the uprising.

The agency quotes the website of the main opposition group al-Wefaq as saying:

a young man identified as Ali Ahmed Ibrahim al-Jazeeri died from what it called internationally banned exploding bullets in the village of Diya near the capital Manama. It said the victim was born in 1996, but gave no further details on the incident.

The Bahraini interior ministry said a Twitter statement that a death had occurred but gave no details. It said said rioters had blocked a number of roads and security forces were seeking to restore order.

Reuters reported witnesses sating "many roads connecting villages around Manama had been blocked, while schools for westerners remained closed for fear of violence".

Danish concerns over Bahrain

Bahrain's most high-profile political prisoner Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, who went on hunger strike last year, holds joint Danish nationality.

Denmark's foreign minister Villy Søvndal, said:

Unfortunately conditions in Bahrain continue to move in the wrong direction. We therefore continue to sustain the pressure on the Bahraini government ...

Denmark will continue to work for the release of Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja and we are in continuous dialogue on this matter with other countries and international organisations, which support the Danish position

Denmark welcomes the beginning of the national dialogue. I hope that this is the first move towards actual and profound political, economic and social reform in Bahrain. The regime in Bahrain has to show that they are willing to listen to the demands of the people and their legitimate expectations of an open, democratic and inclusive society with equal possibilities for all.

This is particularly important with regards to the basic human and constitutional rights. The political prisoners, who are only guilty of using their freedom of speech and assembly, have to be released. The members of the security forces, who have exercised violence and torture, have to be held account for their actions. The authorities in Bahrain should immediately end its reckless treatment of young demonstrators.

Updated at 9.32am GMT

8.55am GMT

Bahrain

The security forces have used teargas and bird shot to break up protests across Bahrain, according to opposition activists.

They also report several arrests including a photographer covering the demonstrations.

Here's a sample of the some of the latest Twitter updates from prominent activists, and the opposition al-Wefaq group.

The government of Bahrain cannot carry on imprisoning people simply because it can’t take criticism. It’s time that people detained simply for exercising their right to freedom of expression be released and for the harassment of other activists to desist.

It has said its role is to be a moderator between the political societies, and that it will implement any agreed consensus. This is no different to the parliament we engaged with between 2006 and 2011, which turned out to be ineffective in creating any change, or even holding the government to account.

This attitude – that Bahrain's problems exist primarily between its own people – is an attempt to deflect responsibility away from the government and to play up the false idea that this conflict is sectarian. The fact that half the opposition delegates who attended the first dialogue session were Sunnis shoots this argument to pieces.

The elitist attitude of a government that can absolve itself of responsibility for a crisis of its making goes to the very heart of the people's demands. Bahrain needs an elected government that reflects the popular will. A government of the people, rather than one that sees itself as being above the people and chooses to implement or ignore whatever it deems appropriate.

It wants a constitutional monarchy with an elected prime minister to replace King Hamad's uncle – in the job for an extraordinary 42 years. Equally threatening for the Al Khalifa dynasty, it is demanding a redrawing of gerrymandered constituency boundaries and equal access to government jobs for Shias, who face discrimination that sometimes borders on apartheid. State media has whipped up anti-Shia prejudice.

Wefaq also insists that the results of the dialogue be put to a referendum rather than be submitted to the king for approval – a crucial difference. Under pressure from the west Hamad did appoint a commission of enquiry into the 2011 events but he has yet to implement key recommendations.

Sheikh Ali Salman, Wefaq's leader, fears the government is trying to buy time. "Everyone is convinced that mistakes were made during the uprising," he told me in a recent interview. "Even the hardliners want to find another way. But they are only prepared to make cosmetic changes."